Photo Gallery
2023
The year Eileen retired.
OK, now I am completely jealous. Eileen was invited by our friend, Deb, to join her on a trip to Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deb was supposed to have gone with her hubby, Charles, in 2022 but could not for some reason I am not remembering. Eileen, with more airline credits to burn or lose as well as a high status with Marriott, decided to join her. Can't say that I blame her. Amsterdam is one place I do want to visit soon. It's a funky place with a storied reputation and did not disappoint based on these photos.
Thoroughly enjoying her retirement, Eileen (actually, I as well) was invited to visit our au pair in 1998-99, Lea Nomme (now Lea Last) and could not pass up the opportunity. Lea is from Estonia but now lives in a London suburb with her husband, Jonathan, and son, Jasper. Lea recently began working in the aerospace industry as an insurance underwriter and has visited us multiple times over the past year or so and will likely continue to do so.
With our already close relationship now being rekindled, it only made sense for Eileen to make the trip. Looks like it was a fun one!
As one way to celebrate their 40-year anniversary, Bruce and Eileen went on yet another AMAWaterways river cruise. This time it was the Douro River in Portugal. They flew to Lisbon, stayed there a couple nights, then took the train to Porto and stayed there a night. The next day they embarked on the AMADouro river boat for 7 days, which took them just into Spain, where they took a bus to Salamanca for the day. Upon returning to Porto, they took the train back to Lisbon, stayed another night and returned home.
Our expectation and plan was to drive into DC for a Thanksgiving dinner with our newphew, Chase, and his lovely girlfriend, Sally. But at the last minute there were no turkeys to be found in the area and, it turned out, their small place would not have accommodated 8 people. So, guess who got volunteered to host Thanksgiving? You guessed it! And because Eileen has an incredible network of do-gooders, several turkeys appeared out of thin air. We ended up with two of them, one fried and one that was pre-smoked. We had the fried turkey along with some sides Chase and Sally, who are vegetarians, brought and others Eileen made or Andrew brought. It was actually a good bit of fun having everyone over. No regrets at all